Date: 10-29-00
PEOPLE IN AMERICA #1795 - Alan Shepard
By Avi ArdittiVOICE ONE:
I'm Shirley Griffith.
VOICE TWO:
And I'm Steve Ember with the V-O-A Special English program,
People in America. Each week we tell about someone important in
the history of the United States. This week we tell about
astronaut Alan Shepard, who was the first American to fly in
space.
TAPE: FREEDOM 7 LAUNCH (:09)
MISSION CONTROL: "Three, two, one, zero. . . liftoff!" SHEPARD:
"Roger, liftoff and the clock has started."
VOICE ONE:
The clock has started. With those words, Alan Shepard became the
first American to travel into space. He was in a small
spacecraft called Freedom Seven. It was on top of a huge rocket
traveling at more than eight-thousand kilometers an hour.
Fifteen minutes later, Freedom Seven came down in the Atlantic
Ocean. Alan Shepard was a national hero. He had won an
important victory for the United States. The date was May Fifth,
Nineteen-Sixty-One. The United States and the Soviet Union were
in a tense competition for world influence. And this competition
was reaching even into the cold darkness of space.
VOICE TWO:
In Nineteen-Fifty-Seven, the Soviet Union launched the first
electronic satellite, Sputnik One. The United States
successfully launched its first spacecraft less than four months
later. Now the two sides were racing to see who could launch
the first human space traveler.
On April Twelfth, Nineteen-Sixty-One, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri
Gagarin flew in space for one-hundred-eight minutes. He circled
the Earth once. The Soviets again were winning the "space race,"
but not for long. Three weeks later the United States also put a
man into space. He was a thirty-seven years old officer in the
Navy -- Alan Shepard.
VOICE ONE:
Alan Bartlett Shepard, Junior, was born on November Eighteenth,
Nineteen-Twenty-Three, in East Derry, New Hampshire. He
graduated from the United States Naval Academy in
Nineteen-Forty-Four. He married soon after his graduation. Then
he served for a short time on a destroyer in the Pacific during
World War Two.
In Nineteen-Forty-Seven, Alan Shepard became a pilot in the Navy.
Later he became a test pilot. The life of a test pilot can be
very dangerous. It helped prepare Alan Shepard for an even
greater danger in the future.
((MUSIC BRIDGE))
VOICE TWO:
The successes that the Soviet Union had with its Sputnik program
caused the United States to speed up its plans for a space
program. The Americans decided to launch a satellite as soon as
possible. The first attempt failed. The rocket exploded during
launch.
Support was growing, in Congress and among scientists, for a
United States civilian space agency. Soon, Congress passed a
bill creating NASA -- the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration. President Eisenhower signed the bill into law.
NASA's job was to be scientific space exploration. Its major
goal was sending the first Americans into space.
Within three months, the program had a name: Project Mercury.
Mercury was the speedy messenger of the Greek gods. While
engineers built the spacecraft, NASA looked for men to fly them.
NASA wanted military test pilots because they test fly new
planes. Test pilots are trained to think quickly in dangerous
situations. On April Seventh, Nineteen-Fifty-Nine, the space
agency announced the seven Mercury astronauts. They would be the
first American space travelers. Alan Shepard was one. The
others were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil
Grissom, Walter Schirra and Donald Slayton.
VOICE ONE:
Nine months after the project started, NASA made its first test
flight of the Mercury spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
In the next two years many other tests followed, all without
astronauts.
The final test flight was at the end of January,
Nineteen-Sixty-One. It carried a chimpanzee named Ham on a
seven-hundred-kilometer flight over the Atlantic Ocean. Several
problems developed. But Ham survived the launch and the landing
in the ocean. Later, Alan Shepard often was asked how he became
the first human American to fly in space. "They ran out of
monkeys," he joked.
VOICE TWO:
There were some concerns about the safety of the huge Redstone
rocket that was to carry the spacecraft. The launch had been
delayed several times while more testswere done. By the time
the rocket was ready for launch, Yuri Gagarin had already
gone into space for the Soviet Union.
The choice of Alan Shepard to be the first American to fly in
space was announced just a few days before the launch. Flights
planned for May Second and May Fourth had to be halted because of
bad weather.
On May Fifth, Nineteen-Sixty-One, a Friday, Alan Shepard
struggled once again into his Mercury capsule. The vehicle was
named Freedom Seven. There was almost no room to move.
Shepard waited inside for four hours. Weather was partly the cause of
the delay. There were clouds that would prevent filming the
launch. Also some last-minute repairs had to be made to his
radio.
Shepard was tired of waiting. So he told the ground crew to
hurry to solve the problems and fire the rocket. Finally, they
did.
VOICE ONE:
The rocket slowly began climbing. Millions of radio listeners
heard a voice from the Cape Canaveral control room say, "This is
it Alan Shepard, there's no turning back. Good luck from all of
us here at the Cape."
The rocket rose higher and higher. For five minutes Alan Shepard
felt the weightlessness of space. He felt himself floating.
Freedom Seven flew one-hundred-eighty-five kilometers high. Then
it re-entered the atmosphere and the spacecraft slowed. The
fifteen-minute flight ended with a soft splash into the ocean
about five-hundred kilometers from Cape Canaveral.
Alan Shepard reported, "Everything is A-Okay." A helicopter
pulled him from the spacecraft and carried him to a waiting ship.
((MUSIC BRIDGE))
VOICE TWO:
The flight was a complete success. Three weeks later President
John F. Kennedy declared a new goal for the United States. He
called for "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to
the Earth" by the end of the Nineteen-Sixties.
In July of Nineteen-Sixty-Nine that came true. Alan Shepard was
not on that first Apollo moon flight . In fact, he almost never
made it to the moon. He developed a disorder in his inner-ear.
It kept him from spaceflight for a number of years. Finally, an
operation cured his problem. NASA named Shepard to command
Apollo Fourteen. The flight was launched at the end of January
Nineteen-Seventy-One. Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell were the
other members of the crew.
Roosa orbited the moon while Shepard and Mitchell landed on the
surface. They collected rocks and soil. Shepard also did
something else. He played golf. He hit two small golf balls.
It was not easy. Shepard was dressed in a big spacesuit. He
described his difficulty to Mission Control in Houston.
When Shepard did hit the golf balls, they traveled "for miles and
miles," as he reported, because the gravity on the moon is
one-sixth of the gravity on Earth.
VOICE ONE:
The only humans to walk on the moon were in the Apollo space
flight program. Twelve American astronauts walked on the moon
between Nineteen-Sixty-Nine and Nineteen-Seventy-Two. Alan
Shepard was the fifth one.
In Nineteen-Seventy-Four, he retired from NASA and the Navy.
Shepard became chairman of a building company in Houston, Texas.
Later he began his own company, called Seven Fourteen
Enterprises. It was named for his flights on Freedom Seven and
Apollo Fourteen.
He also wrote a book with astronaut "Deke" Slayton about his
experiences. The book is called "Moon Shot." And he led a group
raising college money for science and engineering students.
VOICE TWO:
Alan Shepard died on July Twenty-first, Nineteen-Ninety-Eight
after a two-year fight with the blood disease leukemia. He was
seventy-four years old. He had been married to his wife, Louise,
for fifty-three years.
Alan Shepard was the first American to fly in space. He rode
into the sky on rocket fuel and the hopes and dreams of a nation.
He will always be remembered as an American hero because of those fifteen minutes in space.
((THEME))
VOICE ONE:
This Special English program was written by Avi Arditti and
produced by Lawan Davis. This is Shirley Griffith.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember. Join us again next week for another
PEOPLE IN AMERICA program on the Voice of America.
Source: www.voa.gov/special/